There’s a nice piece today on BusinessWeek online by Douglas MacMillan about community-funded online journalism.
Organized around a group of readers bound by location or an area of interest, these new Web sites solicit donations to pay for the work of professional journalists. While the collection plate is small, and in most cases the sites are relying on supplemental funding from advertising, grants, or other institutional donations, their founders say that readers who help underwrite the news become engaged in the process of reporting and storytelling in meaningful ways.
There’s little sign that mainstream media is paying much attention to community-oriented news gathering, MacMillan writes. However, that may change. Mainstream media is sinking fast. Online ad revenues are growing too slowly to make up for the rapid decline in print ad revenues.
